Conventionally, a circulation-type clothes dryer circulating dehumidified and heated air has been widely used. In such a dryer, a fan device for circulating air for drying, a cooling device for cooling and dehumidifying the air for drying, and a heating device for heating the air passing through the cooling device were all disposed in the circulation air flow path.
In such a dryer, condensed water formed by dehumidification is attached to the surface of the cooling device in the form of droplets. As a result, a technique has been widely used wherein the technique is configured such that a condensed water container (drain pan) for collecting the condensed water is disposed and the condensed water recovered to the condensed water container is discharged to the outside or is stored in a separate water storage tank.
Patent document 1 discloses a technique of collecting condensed water dehumidified by a cooling device, in a drain pan and discharging the collected condensed water to the outside of a washing and drying machine by a pump. The drain pan is divided into a portion (hereinafter referred to as a condensed water storage chamber) communicated with an air flow path (hereinafter referred to as a first air flow path) in the side of the upstream of the fan device via a drain hole (opening), and a portion in which a pump is placed (hereinafter referred to as a pump chamber), wherein the condensed water storage chamber and the pump chamber are communicated with each other via a bottom portion thereof. Therefore, the condensed water collected in the condensed water storage chamber via the drain hole is stored in the pump chamber via the communicating portion (hereinafter referred to as a communication path)
In patent document 2, as another example of this technique, condensed water (dehumidified water) condensed in a cooling device (dehumidifying means) is recovered to a dehumidifying tank through a recovery flow path provided in the lower part of the cooling device, and the recovered condensed water is transferred to the water storage tank disposed above a body (a body of the clothes dryer) by a pump (water supply pump). Further, in the clothes dryer disclosed in patent document 2, when it is detected that the condensed water in the tank has reached a certain water level, by a water level sensor provided in the dehumidifying tank, the pump is driven to discharge the condensed water in the dehumidifying tank.